We shall make one little extract from the _myrrour_, and one from Ringelberg. Caxton's author makes a singular remark for his time; and one well worthy of attention. The grammar rules of a language, he says, must have been invented by foreigners: "And whan any suche tonge was perfytely had and usyd amonge any people, than other people not used to the same tonge caused rulys to be made wherby they myght lerne the same tonge ... and suche rulys be called the gramer of that tonge." Ringelberg says that if the right nostril bleed, the little finger of the right hand should be crooked, and squeezed with great force; and the same for the left. {283} We pass on to _the_ Encyclopedie,[458] commenced in 1751; the work which has, in many minds, connected the word _encyclopaedist_ with that of _infidel_. Readers of our day are surprised when they look into this work, and wonder what has become of all the irreligion. The truth is, that the work--though denounced _ab ovo_[459] on account of the character of its supporters--was neither adapted, nor intended, to excite any particular remark on the subject: no work of which D'Alembert[460] was co-editor would have been started on any such plan. For, first, he was a real _sceptic_: that is, doubtful, with a mind not made up. Next, he valued his quiet more than anything; and would as soon have gone to sleep over an hornet's nest as have contemplated a systematic attack upon either religion or government. As to Diderot[461]--of whose varied career of thought it is difficult to fix the character of any one moment, but who is very frequently taken among us for a pure atheist--we will quote one sentence from the article "_Encyclopedie_," which he wrote himself:--"Dans le moral, il n'y a que Dieu qui doit servir de modele a 1'homme; dans les art, que la nature."[462]